Carnegie (28 page)

This represented £260 million in sterling, and around £5–6 billion in modern currency.

These figures he handed to Charles Schwab for transmission to J. Pierpont Morgan. At his office at 23 Wall Street, Morgan quickly reviewed Carnegie’s figures and said: ‘I accept the price.’ It was the most remarkable sale ever in the history of US finance; figures on a scrap of paper, no haggling, no browbeating. To clinch the deal Morgan invited Carnegie to visit him at his house; but no, Carnegie would see Morgan at
his
home. They met and conversed for about fifteen minutes and as they shook hands on the deal Morgan is reported to have said to Carnegie: ‘Mr Carnegie, I want to congratulate you on being the richest man in the world.’
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Thine own reproach alone dost fear.

Inscription for an Altar of Independence, Robert Burns, 1795

S
oon after his retirement from ‘active business’, Andrew Carnegie turned his thoughts to writing his autobiography. For some time his friends and family had been encouraging him to do so and thus commit his reflections to print. Other matters pressing on his time meant that he could only address his autobiographical writing when at leisure at the bungalow at Auchnagar. The writing proceeded, off and on, until Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality caused the First World War to break out on 4 August 1914. Thereafter all writing ceased; as Louise Carnegie noted: ‘Henceforth he was never able to interest himself in private affairs.’
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But back in 1901 there was much to do.

This was the year Carnegie set up the Home Trust Company at Hoboken, New Jersey, to house $300 million of bonds which he realised from the sale of his company. This private bank would handle his financial interests and become executors of his estate, all in the day-to-day care, since 1883, of his financial secretary Robert Franks. The bank also supervised his major future endowments.

One of his first financial provisions was the setting up of a fund worth $4 million, to pay out retirement, injury and destitute family pensions for Carnegie Steel workers; this was called the Carnegie Relief Fund.
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Another $4.25 million was allocated for pensions and annuities for many of Carnegie’s one-time associates and subordinates, including several who had been with him from the early days when he was Superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. His list of worthies included relations and friends as well as Dunfermline acquaintances. Carnegie anecdotes also reveal that he once paid the mortgage of a Dunfermline woman, because she looked like his mother. As time passed a list of 409 recipients was drawn up, who received sums ranging from $300 to $10,000 a year. The Home Trust Company also administered a fund of $6.78 million to pay annuities to forty-five parties designated in his will. Carnegie’s aim was to help those who faced daily anxiety about cash flow, just as his own family had suffered in his Dunfermline childhood and in the early days at Allegheny.

Public announcements about the opening of Carnegie’s purse brought mailbags full of begging letters for disbursements of all kinds. His friend, writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens (better known as Mark Twain), sent him a humorous ‘begging letter’:

You seem to be prosperous these days. Could you lend an admirer a dollar and a half to buy a hymn-book with? God will bless you if you do; I feel it, I know it. So will I. If there should be other applications this one not to count. . . . P.S. Don’t send the hymn-book, send the money. I want to make the selection myself.
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Mark Twain dubbed Carnegie ‘Saint Andrew’, but Carnegie took seriously the question of just how he was to spend his money. He received suggestions from all quarters. The UK company Mother Seigel’s Syrup promoted a competition with the theme ‘How Mr Carnegie Should Get Rid of His Wealth’. Each suggestion – if taken up by Carnegie – would win a sovereign (£1); some 45,000 entries were received. By far the majority plumped for money for themselves, while only 237 altruistically suggested that the money should be used to pay off the British National Debt.
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Already Carnegie’s investment of $2 million was in place for Carnegie Hall, New York (opened 1891), the Carnegie Institute (Library and Music Hall, 1895) and the Carnegie Library at Pittsburgh (1895). Carnegie Free Public Libraries were to be a cornerstone of his philanthropy and he sponsored over 2,500 in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, at a total cost of $56 million.
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By 1900 a foundation was set up to sponsor technical schools at Pittsburgh, which would develop into the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1912) and the Carnegie-Mellon University in 1967.
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But first, before the purse opened wider, there would be a period of rest.

For some time Louise was busy with the new house at No. 2 East 91st Street to the point of exhaustion, interviewing architects, making plans with decorators and assessing furniture catalogues. More than this, she was upset by the press attention following the sale of the Carnegie Company. Personal publicity was anathema to her and gave her much emotional stress. So on 16 March 1901 the Carnegies left the city aboard the German liner
Kaiseren Theresa
to spend six weeks at Antibes on the French Riviera and at the spa of Aix-en-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône. Importantly too, Carnegie was fleeing from reporters desperate to interview the world’s ‘richest man’. Slowly Louise began to relax as she realised that her lifelong rivalry with Carnegie’s business career was at an end. She had never liked Carnegie’s commercial life or his pursuit of wealth. Their childhoods had been very different, but now wealth would bring them together in several joint ventures.

From the summer of 1901 to the summer of 1902 the Carnegies set about alterations at Skibo with a will, damming rivers to make lochs and pools, creating a nine-hole golf course, and building barns, coach houses, a workshop and workers’ cottages. By persuading the Duke of Sutherland to sell him some land, Carnegie now had the waterfall he had long wanted, and he diligently set about improving his golf. To this end he later employed John Henry Taylor, the first English golf professional to win the Open (1894), but his plan was thwarted when he developed the golfer’s condition known as bad-loser-itis.

Carnegie often mentioned to guests what a delight it was for him to have peaches, apricots and figs from his own walled garden and to have the house full of flowers from the terraced garden (constructed by Thomas Mawson in 1904); he also enjoyed refreshing walks in the woodland gardens which he refurbished with new specimens. The estate’s new buildings included the dairy and dairy house, the electricity house, the coach house and the principal gate lodge designed by Ross & Macbeth in 1900. Further from the castle lay the summer house, the ice house, the boatshed and the kennels. At one time Carnegie had his own (now demolished) pier for his yacht
Sea-breeze
.
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Each day brought new ideas and ventures inside and out of Skibo which was now firmly stamped with Carnegie’s seal. Even the new stained glass for the castle illustrated not only the history of the place but Carnegie’s story too, with coloured glass showing the cottage at Moodie Street, Dunfermline, and the ship
Wiscasset
in which they had gone to America. At Skibo Carnegie would charge his batteries for at least five months of the year to find the strength to tackle his new philanthropic ventures.

On 22 January 1901 Queen Victoria died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, aged 82; she had given her name, image and values to most of the past century and was now succeeded by her 59-year-old son as Edward VII. Skibo now reflected the style of the new Edwardian society without the decadence of certain aspects of the king’s new court. But the pacifist Carnegie was still saddened by the ongoing Second Boer War, which would drag on until the Peace of Vereeniging, signed on 31 May 1902. Carnegie’s old friend Herbert Spencer had suggested that Carnegie should give money to assist the ‘widows and orphans of [the Boers] who have been killed’. Carnegie for once showed some political maturity and thought it best not to interfere, lest his actions be ‘resented’ and thought ‘impertinent’.
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On their way back from their French holiday the Carnegies had called in at London as usual and Carnegie met up with J. Pierpont Morgan. They dined at Henry C. Boyes’s newly designed Grocer’s Hall in Princes Street, where the members of the London Chamber of Commerce were honouring their New York counterparts. Carnegie was ebullient, full of his latest philanthropic scheme.

For many decades in the nineteenth century in particular, Scotland’s upper-middle class and the aristocracy had looked to England for the best further education for their children and had sent them to university mainly at Oxford and Cambridge. Consequently, as far as recruitment and funding were concerned, the four Scottish universities of St Andrews (1411), Glasgow (1451), Aberdeen (1495) and Edinburgh (1583) were neglected. This problem was not solved by the constitutional reforms of the Universities (Scotland) Act of 1889. In the December 1900 issue of the influential and respected
Fortnightly Review
(1865) was an article on ‘The Scotland University Crisis’, which pointed out the great need for funds to modernise the campuses and offered this warning: ‘[The universities] may drag on for many years of inglorious life, giving second-rate degrees to second-rate students. But they will have lost their place in British education and the national life of Scotland.’

A supporter of this point of view, and a strong advocate for better funding, was the lawyer and politician Thomas Shaw (later 1st Baron Craigmyle), erstwhile Solicitor-General for Scotland and Liberal MP for Hawick District. A Dunfermline lad like Carnegie, Shaw had written an essay on the subject of Scottish education in the January 1897 issue of the
Nineteenth Century
magazine, which Carnegie had read with interest. When the subject came up again in 1901 Carnegie acted. ‘How much money do you need?’ he asked Shaw. ‘Five million dollars,’ came the prompt reply.
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Carnegie offered the amount in US Steel Bonds, but an underestimation soon had this offer doubled.

‘The way of the philanthropist is hard,’ Carnegie would say ruefully in 1913 and so would be the road to his new target of university bequests. Once he had made his intentions clear the critics soon began attacking Carnegie.
Blackwood’s Magazine
was among those who voiced dissent. This was more Carnegie interference in the British way of life, they ventured, while others saw Carnegie’s apparent generosity as the thin end of the wedge that would lead to Carnegie interfering in the university curricula. They had a point. In the
New York Tribune
of 13 April 1890 Carnegie had sneered at the classical education of the time afforded by the Scots universities; he favoured an education based on science and technology in accordance with his article’s focus, ‘How to Win Fortune’. The theme of Carnegie as the corrupter of British education was now taken up by his opponents.

Although somewhat startled by the vociferousness of his critics, Carnegie was not put off his basic funding idea. He reflected on how science and the classics could be balanced in education – a proposal discussed with such men as John Morley. To further his aim he consulted Alexander Hugh Bruce, 6th Baron Balfour of Burleigh, the Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland, Victor Alexander Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin, and soon to be the Conservative Prime Minister, and First Lord of the Treasury Arthur James Balfour. The consensus of their advice was that equal funding for scientific research and student tuition assistance would be best. Balfour in particular emphasised the vital importance of funds for scientific discovery; this would certainly influence Carnegie’s later donations.
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Towards this end Carnegie founded the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland which would prove the most controversial of his endowments. This Trust, the first to use his name after 1900, had a threefold intent, as laid down in the Trust Deed of 1901:

To improve and expand the Scottish universities.

To help pay tuition for ‘deserving and qualified’ students of Scottish birth or extraction.

To provide research and allied grants, and extend the opportunities for scientific study.

The initial endowment was $10 million in 5 per cent bonds of the US Steel Corporation, which in the first two years provided around £100,000 of funding.
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Lord Balfour of Burleigh was the Trust’s first chairman. To help mollify his critics, who still believed he was ‘interfering’ in the British way of education, Carnegie (reluctantly) had written into the Trust Deed that all regulations could be altered by a two-thirds vote of the trustees. From 1901 too, Carnegie invited the principals of the four Scottish univeristies to Skibo, and thereafter the first week of September at Skibo was known as ‘Principals Week’, to which wives and daughters were also invited.
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The ‘week’ provided a forum for the principals to discuss matters of common interest in an informal way, with Carnegie interlarding his ideas.

Carnegie said that one of the most important events of his life was his ‘election to the Lord Rectorship of St Andrews [University]’.
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St Andrews had been a seat of learning since the days of the tenth-century Celtic-speaking clergy known as the Culdees, and teaching (for service within the administration of the medieval church) was continued by the Augustinian Canons whose priory abutted the cathedral of St Andrews from the twelfth century. The need for establishing a base for advanced education was satisfied when diocesan Bishop Henry Wardlaw – supported by King James I of Scotland, then a prisoner in England – established the
Studium Generale Universitatis
at St Andrews on 11 May 1410. The bishop chartered the new ‘university’ on 28 February 1412, an act formalised within Christendom by the six papal
bullae
of Peter de Luna, Cardinal of St Mary in Cosmedia, who ruled as Antipope Benedict XIII.
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